Search the blog

Level up in real life!

If life is a video game, then Octalysis Prime contains the cheat codes. Learn how to avoid procrastination, find your purpose, and live your life like a gamer.

Time Well Spent, Classcraft, and Blizzard: Gamification Examples

Based on the framework by Yu-kai Chou. Written by Erik van Mechelen. Feedback from Octalysis Prime community members.

Every day in Octalysis Prime, I share a game or gamification example that has captured my attention or persuaded me to do something, whether to simply spend a few seconds longer of attention or to click something or to later mention what I saw or experienced to a friend.

This list is the just a few from last week, with a touch more in detail explanations from the Octalysis design perspective.

Brain hacking and Time Well Spent

This is from the homepage of Time Well Spent, created by a team looking for better ways of tracking app and website and product success versus the current tradition of time-on-site or daily actives.

This homepage uses Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity to great effect through typed messages that disappear, continuing the message. You have to wait to see the next message, and it is worth it. It closes with a call to action.

All of the 8 CDs can be found in ClassCraft. And it’s good to know, as you can use the elements more confidently, and can find a good balance. I’ve found that if I use ClassCraft on the basis of Octalysis, it’s comfortable for me and effective for my students!

Apple Watch Earthday

Classic case of a social influencer using a social prod combined with a mini-quest and a badge to top it off!

Game techniques used:

Influencer

Social Prod

Mini-quest

Badging

Apple’hardcorere fans will probably talk about this, leading to increased word-of-mouth effects (CD5).

Blizzard, tweaking designs of others

Blizzard is a well-known game design and video game company. Well, pretty well known 🙂

Their games have accessibility and well-balanced designs.

Here’s a comment from Bo P. U.

Bo P. U. [3:58 AM]
Also, a more general example: The PC game company Blizzard has a huge focus on proper design.

They never do anything truly original, but have a strategy of “fixing the design mistakes of others”.

Blizzard is known for taking a long time to get games right, but it is worth it. Bo goes on to say:

Try to compare any Blizzard game to the original concept: Heroes of the Storm to DOTA (or LoL) or Hearthstone to Magic the Gathering.

In these examples the difference in accessibility for new players is huge.
So Blizzard can be used as a gold standard if they made a design choice it’s probably the right one.

Keep your eyes open for gamification

If you want to share…please do in the comments, or in the Octalysis Prime Slack community itself!